president obama releasing what he calls his cut and invest agenda, which projects an annual deficit of more than $1.6 trillion for the fiscal year. the president's proposal would freeze discretionary spending, reduce pentagon spending and increase education, infrastructure, and clean energy allotments. it does not address the fast growing and expensive programs of medicare, medicaid, and social security. >>> the marks took a breather early in the week, but the rally kept on rolling midweek. by wednesday, the s&p 500 doubled its lows of march 2009, and the markets hit two and a half year highs. >>> convicted swindler bernard madoff has granted his first jailhouse interview. madoff telling the "new york times" he never thought the collapse of his ponzi scheme would cause the sort of destruction it did to his family, and he also said that various banks and hedge funds, quote, had to know about his fraud. and their attitude was iyou're doing something wrong, we don't want to know about it. >>> the federal reserve says the economy is taking up steam in minutes from the fed's last meeting. o